COMMENTS BY EYEWITNESSES TO THE CRUELTY OF THE PARIS CROWD IN 1789

Gracchus Babeuf, writing his wife on the events of July 22: “I said so much the better! And so much the worse! I can understand the people taking the law into its own hands, and I commend such rough justice when it is satisfied by the destruction of the guilty, but how can it fail today to be cruel? Cruel punishments of every sort, quartering, the rack, the wheel, the stake, the whip, the gibbet, so many tortures everywhere have taught us such wicked ways! Our masters, instead of civilizing us, have made us barbarous because they are barbarous themselves. They are reaping what they have sown, and they will go on reaping it; for all this will have terrible consequences, it seems; we are only at the beginning.”

Loustalot, in Les Révolutions de Paris, 25 July 1789: “Frenchmen, you are destroying your tyrants! Your hatred is shocking! It is horrible! But you will be free at last! I feel, oh my fellow citizens, how much these shocking scenes distress your souls; like you I am deeply distressed by them. But think how ignominious it is to live a slave!”

J.-B. Lallemand, “The Capture of the Bastille” (1789/90)

“Louis XVI, King of a Free People”

The Marquis de Lafayette, commander of the Paris National

Guard

“The Aristocratic Hydra” (1789): The aristocracy is a “ferocious and barbaric monster, out for blood.”

Prieur, “Orgy of the Guards in the Versailles Opera, October 1, 1789”

The women’s march to Versailles, October 5, 1789

(anonymous cartoon)

Prieur, “The Women of the Market Go from Paris to Versailles,” October 5, 1789

Prieur, “The King promises to go to Paris with his Family,” October 6, 1789 (as orderly ranks of National

Guardsmenfire a celebratory volley)

Prieur, “The King and Royal Family Led to Paris by the People,” October 6, 1789

“The Anti-Patriotic Federation of Former Aristocrats” (1791/92)

“La Fayette – Janus”

(1791/92):The general

was suspected of treason after he ordered

the National Guard to fire

on violent crowds

Jean Duplessi-Bertaux, “The Capture of the Tuileries Palace, 10 August 1792” and massacre of the Swiss

Guards